278 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 



with regard to the dog." Strange indeed, almost 

 incredible to our properly enlightened Western 

 minds ! We, who in a manner despise these 

 " people of the East," and object to many of their 

 habits with regard to personal cleanliness, and so 

 on, to be told that our friend and associate the 

 dog, our pet who shares our living and sleeping 

 rooms, and is caressed with our hands and lips, is 

 an unclean beast and unfit to be touched by man ! 

 And so we find that the East is East, and the West 

 is West, with regard to this as well as to most 

 things, and that there are two great dog supersti- 

 tions. And now to proceed with the story of the 

 one which is ours. 



In due time the evolutionists came, teaching 

 that the earth is old, that all the living things on 

 it are the descendants of one or of a very few 

 primordial forms, and as a consequence of such 

 teaching the special creation of the dog was no 

 longer tenable. How then came the dog-super- 

 stition — the belief in its superiority — to survive so 

 rude a shock ? For the evolutionists taught that all 

 the brutes possess, potentially and in germ, all the 

 faculties found in man, and the conclusion seems 

 unavoidable that there must be a correspondence in 

 the physical and psychical development, and that 

 the root of the higher mental and moral powers 

 must exist in the animals of the highest grades ; 

 that the mammal must be more rational than the 

 bird, and the bird than the reptile, and the reptile 

 than the fish ; and that the hyena, civet, and 



